The National’s Matt Berninger returns with new solo song ‘Bonnet of Pins’

The National’s Matt Berninger is back with a new song, ‘Bonnet of Pins,’ that will appear on his second solo album, Get Sunk, out May 30 via Book/Concord Records. 

‘Bonnet of Pins’ is a bit of stadium-sized indie rock with driving drums and live-wire guitars that steadily build with a burst of horns and choral backing vocals. On the chorus, Berninger bellows in his singular baritone, “She finishes of my drink and/Puts on a bonnet of pins and/Says ‘I thought I’d find you much quicker than this/You must’ve thought I didn’t exist, poor you/I do/We’d better go before your boyfriends cry.’”

Get Sunk follows Berninger’s 2020 solo debut, Serpentine Prison. The new albumcame about after, as Berninger put it in a statement, “a long period of writer’s block and self-disgust,” during which he got fed-up asking himself, “Why am I like this?” Though not necessarily autobiographical, the album features narrators grappling with questions of identity and how it’s shaped, both on an individual and communal level.

Berninger recorded Get Sunk with producer and engineer Sean O’Brien (who’s also credited as a co-writer on many songs). The album features musical contributions from Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Booker T Jones, Harrison Whitford, Mike Brewer, and The Walkmen’s Walter Martin and Paul Maroon. 

Berninger will hit the road in support of Get Sunk this spring, with a North American tour kicking off May 19 in Seattle and wrapping May 30 in New York City. (A European and U.K. run will follow in August and September.)